I’ve been looking at brewing a grapefruit IPA for a while. I was reading HomeBrewTalk.com a few months back when I came across a recipe that sounded promising. Using the provided recipe for The Juice is worth the Squeeze I made some adjustments. Those adjustments took in to account the hops I had on hand and my equipment. What I ended up with truly did taste like grapefruit.

The only thing I really need to mention is that you will need to make sure all of the grapefruit zest is filtered out before you keg this. I had problems with the zest clogging the dip tube. I had to disassemble the keg out post several times to clean it out. It was a simple process but one that taught me a valuable lesson about making sure you get all of the debris out of your brew before kegging.

You either love or hate pumpkin beers. Personally, I’m on the love it side. But in recent years pumpkin beers have started to appear on shelves as early as June. Which is far too early for my taste. Who really wants to be drinking a heavy spiced beer when it’s 90 degrees F out? Not me, that is for sure. Anyway, fresh pumpkins aren’t available in April or May, the months in which beers released in June would have been brewed.

This year I decided to brew my own version of a pumpkin ale. It was my first attempt at any kind of fruit beer. I picked up a neck pumpkin at a local farm and did my research. I started with a base recipe from the October 2005 issue of BYO magazine. Then did some additional research on what spices to add. The original recipe only called for .75 TSP of pumpkin pie spice which I didn’t feel was anywhere close to enough.

Craft Beer and Brewing magazine has a list of recommended spices. They also have a pumpkin ale recipe that I used as guidance in selecting spices and amounts. Finally I also looked at several pumpkin pie recipes to get a better idea on what really goes in to a traditional pumpkin pie.

The final beer is toasty and flavorful. It really does smell and taste like fresh baked pumpkin pie. There is still plenty of time to get out there and brew this up for the holiday season.